


What's it Like to Be in Love?

by TheVineSpeaketh



Series: Feels for a Friend [4]
Category: Left 4 Dead 2
Genre: Falling In Love, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-26 04:58:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1675562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVineSpeaketh/pseuds/TheVineSpeaketh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was laughing pretty hard now, and Nick couldn’t keep the smile off his own face. He looked away from Ellis, though it took a lot of his willpower to do it, just as it took a lot of willpower to keep himself from noticing how sweet Ellis looked when he was laughing, because sweet was not a word in his vocabulary.</p><p>Instead, he hid a chuckle beneath his fist and said, as seriously as he could, “Shut up, Ellis.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's it Like to Be in Love?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NuanceNight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NuanceNight/gifts).



> So, this is for a friend, who is having a feels-y day and needed a pick-me-up! So I wrote her some fluff. Sorry it took so long! :D

It was getting late, and the sun was just setting behind the dark onset of clouds that had rolled into the town they were attempting to make a short stop in. They had stopped for gas for Virgil’s boat, and Coach had insisted that they do this for him because he was being such a great help in getting them to New Orleans. Nick hadn’t been all that enthused about it. Any stop is another possibility in which they could die, he thought, and he was not planning on dying in Georgia. But hey, if the stop was just to the gas station across the street, then maybe this opportunity to die was a lot smaller than the last ones they had overtaken. Who knows, maybe Nick could get something out of the deal, like some chips someone left behind, or a can of **_something_** that wasn’t spam. He was sick to death of spam.

Of course this ended up being a serious undertaking in which the chances of dying were, if at all possible, even **_more_** likely than before. Their supplies were limited going both ways, meaning they had to sometimes forgo grabbing health kits and had to instead subsist on pills, the effects of which always made Nick either loopy or sick to his stomach. Really, this was the worst thing that could have possibly happened. He didn’t see how it could have gotten any worse.

He realized how, exactly, when he was stationed with Ellis on top of the gas station roof, and the storm clouds started rolling in.

Nick barely resisted the urge to groan aloud and bury his face in his hands. Key word there being “barely.”

“Aww, Nick,” Ellis said, sidling closer to Nick, who had sat down and started dangling his legs over the side of the gas station, because it was apparent the only combatants they were going to meet were the ones stumbling out of the corn fields, and it was easy to pick those off, so there was no point in standing up about it. “Look on the bright side, man. At least we’re all together, am I right?”

Nick scoffed, his magnums resting heavily in his lap, and he resisted the urge to smack Ellis’s arm. That was the most polite urge he was resisting, so he focused on it. “Yeah, kid,” he spat, clearly sarcastic. “At least we’re all together.” Ellis’s grin was genuine, and Nick nearly scoffed at his optimism. “Why don’t you go ahead and pick off some heads you see floating in the cornfields or something, hayseed. I don’t see us getting out of here soon, so why don’t you go on and do something.”

Ellis stood, cocking his gun—he’d opted for a shotgun, his usual choice of weapon besides an axe or a bat—and looked down the barrels at the cornfield. Nick looked down at his guns, checking their magazines and reloading them, deciding it was best to be safe rather than sorry. Ellis eventually lowered his gun, sighing disappointedly. “Ain’t nothing crawling out of the cornfield now,” Ellis said. “We must’ve shot them all earlier.”

“Sure there is, Ellis,” he replied, clicking the last magazine into place and pulling it back. “You’re just not looking hard enough.”

“I ain’t stupid, Nick,” Ellis replied. “I have eyes.”

“Well, fucking use them,” Nick snapped in response, setting his guns off to the side. “It’s going to rain soon and I’d rather not be ambushed by that 1% we just **_happened_** to miss because **_someone_** was too busy paying attention to his shoelaces or something.”

“I’m not paying attention to my shoelaces,” Ellis said, his tone suggesting rather strongly that he was frustrated. Nick didn’t know; he wasn’t looking. “I’m paying attention to you. And you don’t have to get snappy with me, Nick, I know you’re frustrated because of the whole storm rolling in and not being in your precious city up north or whatever. I get that; this sucks, it really does, Nick, but I swear to God if you keep taking it out on all of us we’re gonna get frustrated too, and then that just isn’t fair. We’re doing the best we can to make the best out of this situation and you’re not helping us much, to be honest.”

Nick did **_not_** feel chagrined at this conversation, instead taking to shining his pistols with his jacket, which by now he didn’t care much about keeping clean. It was already stained with blood and goodness knows what else, and he honestly didn’t have it in him to give a damn any more about it, about the guns, about anything. This whole thing seemed pointless, that’s why he was angry. It felt like it wasn’t worth trying to stay alive because in the end they’d all be dying, one way or another, and he really didn’t see any reason to keep up this charade that things were going to get better. And what if they made it? What if they got to CEDA and it turned out that they were as unhelpful in their appearance as they were in their absence? What then?

Ellis was quiet, slipping a few shells into his shotgun before cocking it. He looked at it a moment before turning to look at Nick, who looked away just as quickly, turning his attention back to his magnums.

“You know,” Ellis said, his tone quiet, and Nick didn’t glance up at him to show he was listening. Ellis went on anyway, just like Nick knew he would. “This ain’t my first time handling a shotgun.”

“Oh, it isn’t?” Nick asked, his tone sarcastic and waspish, and Ellis didn’t even look hurt this time. “I had no idea.”

“Yeah,” Ellis replied. “My first time handling a shotgun was when Keith and I were on his roof picking off squirrels.” He smiled, clearly seeing it in his mind’s eye. "They were trying to get into his momma's bird feeder, and she wasn't havin' it, so we made a day of it. We got up on the roof, and it just after sunrise, and Keith and I were up there with I think a bowl full of those cracker thingies with peanut butter in the middle.”

Nick was still looking at his guns, clearly uninterested, but Ellis continued.

“We were up there for I think only an hour when the first squirrel came along. And Keith said he wanted to use it first because it was his daddy’s shotgun, so I thought that was alright, and I stood back and Keith stood up, and then, he shot it.”

Ellis had a grin on his face, like he was about to get to something particularly funny, and Nick couldn’t help but be curious now. “Shotguns have a kick to them, as you already know, and Keith and I were only thirteen by like a month, and we…” he faded off into laughter, his nose scrunching up slightly, his lips upturned in a big smile. A small little ripple of warmth shot through Nick was he watched him (he was not staring, he was **_not_** ), taking note of his big chocolate eyes squinting with his mirth and his open grin.

“We were still pretty small,” he continued, trying to be serious again and failing, “so the kick knocked Keith right off his feet and he went sliding right off the roof!” He was laughing pretty hard now, and Nick couldn’t keep the smile off his own face. He looked away from Ellis, though it took a lot of his willpower to do it, just as it took a lot of willpower to keep himself from noticing how sweet Ellis looked when he was laughing, because sweet was not a word in his vocabulary.

Instead, he hid a chuckle beneath his fist and said, as seriously as he could, “Shut up, Ellis.”

“And the way Keith slid, he hooked his feet on the bowl of crackers and they fell right down with him! He broke his mamma’s bowl and she stormed out looking for him and there he was with…” he paused here to wheeze, doubled over in fits of laughter with his hand on his stomach, his shotgun deposited safely on the rooftop.  Nick was chuckling a little, smiling at Ellis’s stupid face and his incredible laugh. “With crackers all around him and a shotgun right behind him and he was just moaning about how his ass hurt…”

Nick chuckled again, and again, and maybe a third time, clearly unable to keep it hidden any longer, and Ellis was nearly in tears, biting his knuckles and still clutching his stomach like it ached him. “Ellis, shut up,” Nick said, but there was a chuckle right in the middle of it, and Ellis only gave him a big smile that sent a wave of something else entirely coursing through him. It was enough of a shock to get him to look away, turning his focus right back to the world. He still had a grin on his face, and he probably looked a right idiot because of it.

“She nearly beat him to death for the broken bowl,” he said, coming back to a stand. He looked like he just about had himself composed, but then he remembered something else, his grin coming back in full. “But hey, at least we scared the shit out of the squirrels, right?” He dissolved into laughter again.

Nick giggled a bit, and that was all wrong, because he did not **_giggle_** , especially for stupid southern hicks with big smiles and brown eyes and stupid shirts that fit him perfectly and favorite caps that made him stupidly sentimental and over-protective and coveralls tied off at the waist. He did not giggle for ineloquent masses of optimism that seemed to see the sunshine even in the pouring rain, for brunets with hat hair that never seemed to settle down and accents that made everything seem overly-friendly and under-educated, for shotgun-wielding mechanics with big calloused hands and muscles and tans and—

—and Nick suddenly choked, because he knew that kind of thinking and what it led to, and no, **_no_** , he couldn’t be doing this, not here, not now, not when Ellis was right there looking at him and clearly trying to gauge what was wrong. He couldn’t be, could he? Not with Ellis. Not in the middle of a zombie apocalypse they couldn’t survive. Not when the chances of living long enough to know for sure were so slim.

“Ey, Nick,” Ellis said, leaning low next to him and giving him a grin while giving his shoulder a nudge. “You’re smiling. I must’ve done something right, huh?”

Nick only realized that despite his epiphany, he was still smiling, a little grin quirking the edges of his lips. He looked at Ellis, their faces close, and he was able to take in the stubble lining his cheeks, the thickness of his lips, the benevolence of his expression, of his whole being. And he couldn’t help but pat Ellis’s cheek and grin up at him. “Yeah, hayseed,” he said, looking away from him and back down at his magnums. “You must’ve done something right.”

“See, I knew you weren’t just some grumpy old buzzard,” he said, coming to sit next to Nick again, looking out over the fields. “You do have a heart.” For a moment, they just looked over the fields together, and then Ellis spoke again. “I have another story, if you wanna hear it.” He shrugged. “If you’re interested, I mean.”

It seemed to surprise Ellis as much as it surprised Nick when he leaned over, bumping Ellis’s shoulder with his own and smiling. “Yeah, overalls,” he replied, turning to look at him, Ellis’s expression stretched into one of shock before it morphed into palpable joy, and he instantly launched into a tale about how he and Keith had broken into their neighbor’s garage to get back a motorbike that he’d apparently stolen from Keith.

All the while, Nick watched him, looking at his hands and how they gestured wildly as he told his story, his eyes crinkling at the edges as he smiled or laughed, his smile widening and dimming as he tried to control himself.

And all the while, Nick was thinking just one thing.

_I am so fucking screwed, aren’t I?_

**Author's Note:**

> I had the best writing vibes for this by listening to Fapy Lafertin Quartet's "Aurore." 
> 
> This was inspired by a Skype conversation I was having with the aforementioned friend. :D
> 
> Come visit me on [tumblr!](http://exacteyewriting.tumblr.com)


End file.
